In 1961 archaeologists discovered a family archive of legal papyri in a cave near the Dead Sea where their owner, the Jewish woman Babatha, had hidden them in 135 CE at the end of the Bar Kokhba revolt. Babatha's Orchard analyzes the oldest four of these papyri to argue that underlying them is a hitherto undetected and surprising train of events concerning how Babatha's father, Shim'on, purchased a date-palm orchard in Maoza on the southern shore of the Dead Sea in 99 CE that he later gave to Babatha. The central features of the story, untold for two millennia, relate to how a high Nabatean official had purchased the orchard only a month before, but suddenly rescinded the purchase, and how Shim'on then acquired it, in enlarged form, from the vendor. Teasing out the details involves deploying the new methodology of archival ethnography, combined with a fresh scrutiny of the papyri (written in Nabatean Aramaic), to investigate the Nabatean and Jewish individuals mentioned and their relationships within the social, ethnic, economic, and political realities of Nabatea at that time. Aspects of this context which are thrown into sharp relief by Babatha's Orchard include: the prominence of wealthy Nabatean women and their husbands' financial reliance on them; the high returns and steep losses possible in date cultivation; the sophistication of Nabatean law and lawyers; the lingering effect of the Nabateans' nomadic past in lessening the social distance between elite and non-elite; and the good ethnic relations between Nabateans and Jews.

In late Antiquity, archaeology demonstrates lively and far-flung exchange along the river Dniester, through current Poland to the Baltic. By the 11th century the former Barbaricum had been transformed into a string of Christian kingdoms and principalities, whose parallel histories are as conspicuous as their differences. From the legendary (if possible real) migrations of the Goths in Antiquity to the Varangian guard at the imperial court of Byzantium in the late Viking Age, trans-cultural interaction complemented important historical development. This book is about aspects of the changing interactions from late Antiquity to the High Middle Ages, from Goths to Varangians, and from the Baltic to the Black Sea. The history and archaeology of these connections have been poorly exposed and investigated in modern times. The papers presented in this volume are a selection of those presented during a series of four meetings organised 2007-2009 by the "Varangian Network", an interdisciplinary network for archaeological and historical research on relations between the Baltic and the Black Sea from late Antiquity to the medieval period.

Afghanistan is at the cultural crossroads of Asia, where the great civilisations of Mesopotamia and Iran, South Asia and Central Asia overlapped and sometimes conflicted. Its landscape embraces environments from the high mountains of the Hindu Kush to the Oxus basin and the great deserts of Sistan; trade routes from China to the Mediterranean, and from Central Asia to the Arabian Sea cross the country. It has seen the development of early agriculture, the spread of Bronze Age civilisation of Central Asia, the conquests of the Persians and of Alexander of Macedon, the spread of Buddhism and then Islam, and the empires of the Kushans, Ghaznavids, Ghurids and Timurids centred there, with ramifications across southern Asia. All of which has resulted in some of the most important, diverse and spectacular historical remains in Asia. First published in 1978, this was the first book in English to provide a complete survey of the immensely rich archaeological remains of Afghanistan. The contributors, all acknowledged scholars in their field, have worked in the country, on projects ranging from prehistoric surveys to the study of Islamic architecture. It has now been thoroughly revised and brought up to date to incorporate the latest discoveries and research.

Shifting Sand is the journal of Julian Berry, then a 17-year-old archaeologist, written on-site during excavations in Deir Alla, Jordan, in 1964. The dig was organized by the University of Leiden and led by Dr Henk Franken who was looking to find a material context for Old Testament narratives, and to build a stratigraphic chronology to mark the transition from the Bronze through to the early Iron Ages based mainly around pottery finds. When the author was working on the site, three clay tablets were discovered from the late Bronze Age with early Canaanite inscriptions, that when translated in 1989 showed that Deir Alla was the Biblical Pethor, and that it had been attacked by Israelites from Pithom in Egypt. Later a wall inscription was found in Aramaic dating to 880-770BCE referencing the prophet Balaam. Berry was as much interested by what was going on above ground as below, and kept a detailed journal of the daily lives of the archaeologists and life in the camp. The dig also had many fascinating and famous archaeologists visiting, including Father Roland de Vaux, and Diana Kirkbride. During breaks from the dig Berry went on a number of journeys in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria and he describes their cities, but also the very tranquil agricultural countryside that he found at that time. He discovered adventure when a drunk taxi driver tried to murder him as he resisted his advances; later he was caught up in a revolt against Hafez al-Assad in Homs, father of Bashir, and was asked by a taxi driver if he had come to Damascus to see the public hanging. Above all this book should be read as fascinating insight into the lives of archaeologists over 50 years ago, and the very close links between the European team, the Arab workmen, and the daily life in a simple mud-brick village.

The eastern frontier of the Roman Empire extended from northern Syria to the western Caucasus, across a remote and desolate region 800 miles from the Aegean. It followed the great Euphrates valley to penetrate the harsh mountains of Armenia Minor and south of the Black Sea, along the Pontic coast to the finally reach the foothills of the Caucasus. Though vast, this terrain has long remained one of the great gaps in our knowledge of the ancient world, barely visited and effectively unknown - until now. Here, Timothy Bruce Mitford offers an account of half a century of research and exploration over sensitive territory, in challenging conditions, to discover the material remains of Rome's last unexplored frontier. The geographical framework introduces frontier installations as they occur: fortresses and forts, roads, bridges, signalling stations, and navigation of the Euphrates. The journey is enriched with observations of consuls and travellers, memories of Turkish and Kurdish villagers, and notes and photographs of a way of life little changed since antiquity. The process of discovery was mainly on foot; staying in villages with local guides, following ancient tracks, and conversing with great numbers of people - provincial and district governors, village elders and teachers, police and jandarma, farmers and shepherds, and everyone in between. This came with its perils and pleasures; encounters with treasure hunters and apparent bandits, tales of saints and caravans, arrests and death threats, bears and wild boars, rafts and fishing, earthquakes, all amid the tumultuous events of the second half of the twentieth century. Richly illustrated with large-scale maps, photographs, and sketches, this is an account of travel and discovery, set against a background of a disappearing world encountered in the long process of academic exploration.

The Orontes Valley in western Syria is a land 'in between', positioned between the small trading centres of the coast and the huge urban agglomerations of the Euphrates Valley and the Syro-Mesopotamian plains beyond. As such, it provides a critical missing link in our understanding of the archaeology of this region in the early urban age.A Land in Between documents the material culture and socio-political relationships of the Orontes Valley and its neighbours from the fourth through to the second millennium BCE. The authors demonstrate that the valley was an important conduit for the exchange of knowledge and goods that fuelled the first urban age in western Syria. This lays the foundation for a comparative perspective, providing a clearer understanding of key differences between the Orontes region and its neighbours, and insights into how patterns of material and political association changed over time.

The Sasanian Empire (3rd -7th centuries) was one of the largest empires of antiquity, stretching from Mesopotamia to modern Pakistan and from Central Asia to the Arabian Peninsula. This mega-empire withstood powerful opponents in the steppe and expanded further in Late Antiquity, whilst the Roman world shrunk in size. Recent research has revealed the reasons for this success, notably population growth in some key territories, economic prosperity and urban development, made possible through investment in agriculture and military infrastructure on a scale unparalleled in the late antique world. Our volume explores the empire's relations with its neighbours and key phenomena which contributed to its wealth and power, from the empire's armed forces to agriculture, trade and treatment of minorities. The latest discoveries, notably major urban foundations, fortifications and irrigations systems, feature prominently. An empire whose might and culture rivalled Rome and foreshadowed the caliphate will be of interest to scholars of the Roman and Islamic world.Challenges our Eurocentric world view by presenting a Near-Eastern empire whose urban culture and military apparatus rivalled that of Rome . Covers the latest discoveries on foundations, fortifications and irrigation systems. Includes case studies on Sasanian frontier walls and urban culture in the Sasanian Empire

The Neolithic settlement of Aknashen (Ararat valley, Armenia): excavation seasons 2004-2015 is the first monograph devoted to the Neolithic period in Armenia. The research is based on an Armenian-French project, in which specialists from Canada, Romania, Germany and Greece also participated. The volume concerns the natural environment, material culture and subsistence economy of the populations of the first half of the 6th millennium BC, who established the first sedentary settlements in the alluvial plain of the Araxes river. The thickness of the cultural layer of Aknashen (almost 5m), the extent of the excavated areas and the multidisciplinary nature of the research, confer great importance upon this site for the study of the Neolithic, both in Armenia and in the South Caucasus as a whole. The publication examines the similarities and differences that exist between the sites established in the 6th millennium in the basins of the rivers Araxes (Armenia) and Kura (Georgia and Azerbaijan), as well as parallels with contemporary cultures in Southwest Asia. It also examines questions concerning the characterisation and periodisation of the Neolithic in the central part of the South Caucasus, the emergence of a production economy (pottery, animal husbandry, etc.) and the Neolithisation of this region.

Assyria was one of the most influential kingdoms of the Ancient Near East. In this Very Short Introduction, Karen Radner sketches the history of Assyria from city state to empire, from the early 2nd millennium BC to the end of the 7th century BC. Since the archaeological rediscovery of Assyria in the mid-19th century, its cities have been excavated extensively in Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Israel, with further sites in Iran, Lebanon, and Jordan providing important information. The Assyrian Empire was one of the most geographically vast, socially diverse, multicultural, and multi-ethnic states of the early first millennium BC.Using archaeological records, Radner provides insights into the lives of the inhabitants of the kingdom, highlighting the diversity of human experiences in the Assyrian Empire. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

By day, young Gilbert Bagnani studied archaeology in Greece, but by night he socialised with the elite of Athenian society. Secretly writing for the Morning Post in London, he witnessed both antebellum Athens in 1921 and the catastrophic collapse of Christian civilisation in western Anatolia in 1922. While there have been many accounts by refugees of the disastrous flight from Smyrna, few have been written from the perspective of the west side of the Aegean. The flood of a million refugees to Greece brought in its wake a military coup in Athens, the exile of the Greek royal family and the execution or imprisonment of politicians, whom Gilbert knew. Gilbert’s weekly letters to his mother in Rome reveal his Odyssey-like adventures on a voyage of discovery through the origins of western civilisation. As an archaeologist in Greece, he travelled through time seeing history repeat itself: Minoan Knossos, Byzantine Constantinople and Ottoman Smyrna were all violently destroyed, but the survivors escaped to the new worlds of Mycenaean Greece, Renaissance Venice and modern Greece. At Smyrna in the twentieth century, history was written not only by the victors but was also recorded by the victims. At the same time, however, the twentieth century itself was so filled with reports of ethnic cleansings on such a scale that the reports brutalized the humanity of the supposedly civilized people reading about them, and the tragedy of Smyrna disappeared from public awareness between the cataclysmic upheavals of the First and Second World Wars.

Flint Procurement and Exploitation Strategies in the Late Lower Paleolithic Levant examines twelve lithic assemblages from Qesem Cave. Potential flint sources were located, petrographic thin sections of archaeological and geologic samples were studied, and a geochemical analysis was performed. The results show that flint from local Turonian sources was often brought to the cave, forming most of the identified flint. Flint from non-Turonian geologic origins was also used in noteworthy proportions, in specific typotechnological categories. The availability of desired flints around the cave, highly suitable for the production of the commonly-used blades, as well as for the production of other tools, probably played a role in the decision to settle there. The notable proportions of non-Turonian flint types, a pattern that repeats itself through time, demonstrate consistency in accessing sources containing non-local flint, implying the existence of knowledge transmission mechanisms concerning the distribution of sources and the suitability of specific flint types for the production of specific blanks/tools.

Since 2007, the conferences organized under the title 'Broadening Horizons' have provided a regular venue for postgraduates and early career scholars in Ancient Near Eastern Studies. Three volumes present the proceedings of the 6th Broadening Horizons Conference, which took place at the Freie Universitat Berlin from 24-28 June, 2019. The general theme, 'Bridging the Gap: Disciplines, Times, and Spaces in Dialogue', is aimed at encouraging communication and the development of multidisciplinary approaches to the study of material cultures and textual sources. Volume 3 contains 14 papers from Session 4 - Crossing Boundaries: Connectivity and Interaction; and Session 6 - Landscape and Geography: Human Dynamics and Perceptions.

The first book of its kind to be published for a general readership from youngsters upwards, Hidden in the Sands: Uncovering Qatar's Past is the fascinating, fun and educational story of Qatar's heritage and the exciting discoveries being made by archaeologists. This informative and delightful book is published through the generosity of Maersk Oil as part of its programme to support education and unlock Qatar's history and heritage. Hidden beneath the sand and sea and revealed on rocks are the clues which explain why this ancient land has been such a key region throughout history. Here you can follow the detective work of archaeologists and discover Qatar's rich past. In conjunction with a fully interactive website and also available in an Arabic edition, Hidden in the Sands describes in words and pictures the treasures uncovered by archaeologists, the methods they use, and the significance of their discoveries. Today, using state-of-the-art technology for excavation, dating and conservation, teams of experts are working all over Qatar to reconstruct its past. Hidden in the Sands is fully illustrated with photographs, maps and diagrams, and embellished by the vivid and evocative illustrations of the artist Norman MacDonald. Told simply and with in-depth and up-to-date detail, it leads readers through the fascinating world of archaeology. Like reconstructing an earthenware jar from a hundred little shards, this work pieces together the fragments of the past to produce a complete and beautiful whole.

The major part of the Near East was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire (934-610BC) in a few centuries. If the geopolitical map of the region was altered, the concrete impact it exerted on the territories with which it came into contact is difficult to appraise. Until recently, there was a general tendency to consider that the Assyrians tightly controlled their whole periphery by maintaining a high number of soldiers and personnel while initiating a process of 'Assyrianization'. Présence et influence assyriennes dans le royaume de Hamat assesses the importance and nature of the Assyrian presence in the kingdom of Hamat (in northwest Syria) to determine whether there is a link between the presence and influence of the Assyrians. The results of an analysis of historical and archaeological sources show that the Assyrian presence in Hamat was much more subtle than what might have been imagined. On the one hand, the Assyrian provincial elite insisted on being legitimized with the natives and cooperating with the local elite rather than using force to maintain the yoke of the Empire. On the other hand, far from indicating Assyrian colonization or a change of culture, the influence of Assyrian culture in Hamat would rather translate into the local elite adopting new objects of prestige that contributed to conspicuous consumption and competitive emulation.

Since 2007, the conferences organized under the title 'Broadening Horizons' have provided a regular venue for postgraduates and early career scholars in Ancient Near Eastern Studies. Three volumes present the proceedings of the 6th Broadening Horizons Conference, which took place at the Freie Universitat Berlin from 24-28 June, 2019. The general theme, 'Bridging the Gap: Disciplines, Times, and Spaces in Dialogue', is aimed at encouraging communication and the development of multidisciplinary approaches to the study of material cultures and textual sources. Volume 1 contains 17 papers from Session 1: Entanglement. Material Culture and Written Sources in Dialogue; Session 2: Integrating Sciences in Historical and Archaeological Research; and Session 5: Which Continuity? Evaluating Stability, Transformation, and Change in Transitional Periods.

A spellbinding history of the hidden world below the Holy City—a saga of biblical treasures, intrepid explorers, and political upheaval.

In 1863, a French senator arrived in Jerusalem hoping to unearth relics dating to biblical times. Digging deep underground, he discovered an ancient grave that, he claimed, belonged to an Old Testament queen. News of his find ricocheted around the world, evoking awe and envy alike, and inspiring others to explore Jerusalem’s storied past.

In the century and a half since the Frenchman broke ground, Jerusalem has drawn a global cast of fortune seekers and missionaries, archaeologists and zealots, all of them eager to extract the biblical past from beneath the city’s streets and shrines. Their efforts have had profound effects, not only on our understanding of Jerusalem’s history, but on its hotly disputed present. The quest to retrieve ancient Jewish heritage has sparked bloody riots and thwarted international peace agreements. It has served as a cudgel, a way to stake a claim to the most contested city on the planet. Today, the earth below Jerusalem remains a battleground in the struggle to control the city above.

Under Jerusalem takes readers into the tombs, tunnels, and trenches of the Holy City. It brings to life the indelible characters who have investigated this subterranean landscape. With clarity and verve, acclaimed journalist Andrew Lawler reveals how their pursuit has not only defined the conflict over modern Jerusalem, but could provide a map for two peoples and three faiths to peacefully coexist.

This volume presents a series of studies by scholars working in Middle Eastern archaeology who actively apply social theory to interpret their fieldwork. It aims to highlight the value of using social theory in the interpretation of field work in a region where, traditionally, such approaches have not played a major role.There are a number of factors that account for why social theory is often under-exploited by archaeologists in this part of the world. In many countries, where large numbers of the foreign archaeologists are involved, a division between those doing fieldwork and those undertaking archaeological interpretation can easily arise. Or, the lack of interest in social theory may stem from a legacy of positivism that overrides other approaches. There is also the fact that archaeology and anthropology often belong to separate academic departments and are considered two separate disciplines disconnected from each other. In some cases the centrality of historical paradigms has precluded the use of social theory.There are also divisions between universities and other research institutions, such as departments of antiquities, which is not conductive to interdisciplinary cooperation. This factor is especially debilitating in contexts of rapid destruction of sites and the exponential growth of salvage excavations and emergency surveys.The papers integrate a wide range of perspectives including 'New' or 'Processual' archaeology, Marxist, 'Post-Processual', evolutionist, cognitive, symbolic, and Cyber- archaeologies and touch on many topics including 3D representation, GIS, mapping and social theory, semiotics and linguistics, gender and bioarchaeology, social and technical identities, and modern historical modellingy and social practices in Middle Eastern archaeology.

In scholarly literature, there is much attention given to the Hittites and the Mycenaean Greeks, but the Luwians of Western Anatolia are notoriously neglected. Therefore, a study focussing on the latter is desirable. In this book, the presently available information on the western Luwians is assembled. This entails, primarily, the epigraphic evidence in the form of Luwian hieroglyphic inscriptions from the region and the historical information which can be deduced from it, as well as historical Hittite sources. As a prerequisite for the reconstruction of the history of the western Luwians during the Middle and Late Bronze Ages, the thorny question of the geography of their habitat needs to be tackled. This can now be done in an adequate manner owing to the most recent discoveries. Apart from Luwian hieroglyphic, the Luwians of Western Anatolia also used cuneiform script. Based on the linguistic data from both categories of evidence, a sketch of their language is presented. It must be realized, though, that not all inhabitants of Western Anatolia were speakers of the Luwian language. Thus, it will be argued that their northern neighbours in the Troad spoke a different language, of Thraco-Phrygian type. Finally, the Luwians were not autochthonous in the region, but preceded by speakers of a different Indo-European tongue, most adequately defined as Old Indo-European in Hans Krahe’s terms.

In the desert sands of southern Jordan lies a once-hidden conflict landscape along the Hejaz Railway. Built at the beginning of the twentieth-century, this narrow-gauge 1,320 km track stretched from Damascus to Medina and served to facilitate participation in the annual Muslim Hajj to Mecca. The discovery and archaeological investigation of an unknown landscape of insurgency and counter-insurgency along this route tells a different story of the origins of modern guerrilla warfare, the exploits of T. E. Lawrence, Emir Feisal, and Bedouin warriors, and the dramatic events of the Arab Revolt of 1916-18. Ten years of research in this prehistoric terrain has revealed sites lost for almost 100 years: vast campsites occupied by railway builders; Ottoman Turkish machine-gun redoubts; Rolls Royce Armoured Car raiding camps; an ephemeral Royal Air Force desert aerodrome; as well as the actual site of the Hallat Ammar railway ambush. This unique and richly illustrated account from Nicholas Saunders tells, in intimate detail, the story of a seminal episode of the First World War and the reshaping of the Middle East that followed.

In Pursuit of Visibility honors the distinguished career of a scholar of Canaan and ancient Israel, Beth Alpert Nakhai. In fifteen diverse essays, Professor Nakhai's students and colleagues celebrate her important contributions to the field of Near Eastern Archaeology, including her research into gender, household, and cult in the Bronze and Iron Age southern Levant, and her tireless efforts to acknowledge and support women in the profession. These essays reflect Professor Nakhai's commitment to combining archaeology and text to reconstruct aspects of ancient life and make those who are marginalized visible in both the past and the present.

Contents: 1) New perspectives on Minaean expiatory texts (Alessio Agostini); 2) Investigating an early Islamic landscape on Kuwait Bay: the archaeology of historical Kadhima (Andrew Blair, Derek Kennet & Sultan al-Duwish); 3) The early settlement of HD-5 at Ras al- add, Sultanate of Oman (fourth-third millennium BCE) (Federico Borgi, Elena Maini, Maurizio Cattani & Maurizio Tosi); 4) Known and unknown archaeological monuments in the Dumat al-Jandal oasis in Saudi Arabia: a review (Guillaume Charloux); 5) Prehistory and palaeo-geography of the coastal fringes of the Wahiba Sands and Bar al-Hikman, Sultanate of Oman (Vincent Charpentier, Jean-Francois Berger, Remy Crassard, Marc Lacaze & Gourguen Davtian); 6) Unlocking the Early Bronze Age: attempting to extract Umm an-Nar tombs from a remotely sensed Hafit dataset (poster) (William Deadman); 7) Iron Age impact on a Bronze Age archaeological landscape: results from the Italian Mission to Oman excavations at Salut, Sultanate of Oman (Michele Degli Esposti & Carl Phillips); 8) Late Palaeolithic core-reduction strategies in Dhofar, Oman (Yamandu Hilbert, Jeffrey Rose & Richard Roberts); 9) Reflexions sur les formes de l'ecrit a l'aube de l'Islam (Frederic Imbert); 10) Getting to the bottom of Zabid: the Canadian Archaeological Mission in Yemen, 1982-2011 (Edward J. Keall); 11) New perspectives on regional and interregional obsidian circulation in prehistoric and early historic Arabia (Lamya Khalidi, Krista Lewis & Bernard Gratuze); 12) The Saudi-Italian-French Archaeological Mission at Dumat al-Jandal (ancient Adumatu). A first relative chronological sequence for Dumat al-Jandal. Architecture and pottery (Romolo Loreto); 13) Excavation at the 'Tree of Life' site (Mohammed Redha Ebrahim Hasan Mearaj); 14) The origin of the third-millennium BC fine grey wares found in eastern Arabia (S. Mery, R. Besenval, M.J. Blackman & A. Didier); 15) Building H at Mleiha: new evidence of the late pre-Islamic period D phase (PIR.D) in the Oman peninsula (second to mid-third century AD) (M. Mouton, M. Tengberg, V. Bernard, S. Le Maguer, A. Reddy, D. Soulie, M. Le Grand & J. Goy); 16) An overview of archaeology and heritage in Qatar (Sultan Muhesen, Faisal al-Naimi & Ingolf Thuesen); 17) The construction of Medina's earliest city walls: defence and symbol (Harry Munt); 18) Landscape signatures and seabed characterization in the marine environment of north-west Qatar (poster) (Faisal al-Naimi, Richard Cuttler, Ibrahim Ismail Alhaidous, Lucie Dingwall, Garry Momber, Sadd al-Naimi, Paul Breeze & Ahmed Ali al-Kawari); 19) Towards an annotated corpus of Soqotri oral literature: the 2010 fieldwork season (Vitaly Naumkin, Leonid Kogan & Dmitry Cherkashin (Moscow); A mad Isa al-Darhi & Isa Guman al-Darhi (Soqotra, Yemen); 20) Palace, mosque, and tomb at al-Ruway ah, Qatar (Andrew Petersen & Tony Grey); 21) The origin and development of the oasis landscape of al- Ain (UAE) (Timothy Power & Peter Sheehan); 22) Evidence from a new inscription regarding the goddess (t)rm and some remarks on the gender of deities in South Arabia (Alessia Prioletta); 23) Archaeological excavations at the settlement of al-Furay ah (Freiha), north-west Qatar (Gareth Rees, Faysal al-Naimi, Tobias Richter, Agnieszka Bystron & Alan Walmsley); 24) The 2010-2011 excavation season at al-Zubarah, north-west Qatar (poster) (Tobias Richter, Faisal Abdulla al-Naimi, Lisa Yeomans, Michael House, Tom Collie, Pernille Bangsgaard Jensen, Sandra Rosendahl, Paul Wordsworth & Alan Walmsley); 25) The Great Mosque of Qalhat rediscovered. Main results of the 2008-2010 excavations at Qalhat, Oman (Axelle Rougeulle, Thomas Creissen & Vincent Bernard); 26) A new stone tool assemblage revisited: reconsidering the 'Aterian' in Arabia (Eleanor M.L. Scerri); 27) Egyptian cultural impact on north-west Arabia in the second and first millennia BC (Gunnar Sperveslage & Ricardo Eichmann); 28) The Neolithic site FAY-NE15 in the central region of the Emirate of Sharjah (UAE) (Margarethe Uerpmann, Roland de Beauclair, Marc Handel, Adelina Kutterer, Elisabeth Noack & Hans-Peter Uerpmann); 29) Ka imah remembered: historical traditions of an early Islamic settlement by Kuwait Bay (Brian Ulrich); 30) Yemeni opposition to Ottoman rule: an overview (Abdol Rauh Yaccob).

European adventurers began exploring Palmyra's priceless Roman ruins in the 17th century, but it wasn't until the advent of photography that the public became aware of its scale and majesty. In 1885, the sight of Palmyra astounded members of the Wolfe Expedition as they journeyed home from Mesopotamia. The group's photographer, John Henry Haynes, documented the monumental temples, tombs and colonnades in more than a hundred invaluable images. Since then, Haynes and his work have largely been forgotten, and the forces of the self-styled Islamic State have destroyed the key monuments of this world-renowned site, including the glorious Temple of Bel. Haynes's images of Palmyra - published here for the first time - are all the more poignant. The Syrian city of Palmyra - known as ‘the Pearl of the Desert’ - was one of the most important cultural centres of the ancient world. A key stop on the Silk Road, it was a vital link between the East and the West, and a prize fought over by successive conquering armies.

The first edition of In the Shadow of the Ancestors (2007) was the first and only summary of decades of archaeological research in the Oman Peninsula. This second expanded had a long and winding journey toward publication. The passing away of Serge Cleuziou not long after the release of the first edition left Maurizio Tosi alone in completing this challenging enterprise. For this reason, and out of respect for his lifelong friend and colleague, he decided not to intervene too extensively on the main contents, but to add instead to the original eleven chapters a number of new ‘windows’ written by other scholars, in order to include more recent research and interpretations. In addition to the main contents, the new contributions by this younger generation of scholars, most of whom were students and collaborators of Cleuziou and Tosi, offers great testament to the legacy the authors leave behind them.

The archaeological excavations along the route of packages 3 and 4 of the Batinah Expressway, Sultanate of Oman, conducted during the spring and summer of 2014, recorded over 60 archaeological sites over the 200km stretch of roadway cutting through the Batinah plain, north-west of Muscat. The majority of these sites were prehistoric tombs of varying ages. These excavations have allowed a re-thinking of the dating of some of these tombs, looking particularly at the structural styles of the tombs as well as their location in the landscape. It has also demonstrated techniques of rapid yet reliable excavation and recording techniques adapted from UK commercial archaeology for the Omani conditions. The report builds on the work of academic studies and adds a large dataset to the archaeology of the Batinah, Oman and the wider region. It is hoped that this will allow a wider scale reconsideration of the burial styles of the prehistoric Gulf.